NEW ORLEANS -- Builders could soon tee off on plans to tear down the former Times-Picayune building to make way for a high-tech driving range.
Those plans came another step closer to reality Tuesday when the City Planning Commission voted 6-0 to approve plans for a Drive Shack location on the site of the former newspaper plant.
Commissioners Walter Isaacson and Jonathan Stewart were absent; Commissioner Robert Steeg recused himself.
Commissioner Eugene Green Jr. said he hopes the $29 million project will breath new life into a part of the city that is largely industrial.
The final decision is up to the City Council. The site sits in District B Councilman Jay Banks’ territory.
The former Picayune building has sat vacant since the newspaper began to move out its operations in 2012. The building, which opened in 1967, was closed and sold in 2015 when the Times-Picayune began to be printed at its sister paper, The Mobile Press-Register.
A group of local businessmen, including developer Joseph Jaeger Jr. and float builder Barry Kern, purchased the building for $3.5 million in 2016.
Since then the building has been used as a setting for several films and TV shows, including “NCIS: New Orleans.”
An earlier plan to build a Top Golf location, a competitor to Drive Shack, fell through.
The prospect of demolition has also raised concern among some preservationists because of three-story murals in the building’s lobby called “Symbols of Communications,” done by artist Enrique Alferez.
The building’s owners have vowed to save those murals.
